In certain prior art, remote diagnostics and analysis of the performance of vehicle may require the storage and transmission of entire configuration files from a central processing center to vehicle electronics. Such transmission tends to inefficiently use one or more communications channels between central processing center and vehicle electronic. A land-based communication channel might be unavailable or unreliable where the vehicle and associated vehicle electronics are located in rural areas such that a satellite communications channel is required. For example, the transmission of entire configuration files, and hence remote diagnostics, may not be economically feasible, where more expensive satellite communications channels are required to handle a significant throughput of data in entire configuration files.
In some prior art, remote diagnostics and analysis of the performance of vehicles may require distinct software payloads to accommodate both local connection to the vehicle, via a wireline or short-range wireless connection, or remote connection to the vehicle, via a wireless communications system. The distinct software payloads tend to require duplicative software that can tax the software processing capability or data processing throughput of the vehicle electronics. For example, software updates or diagnostics processed by the vehicle electronics may perform more slowly because of duplicative software, or other software on the vehicle electronics may perform slowly where less data processing resources are available.
In certain prior art, the diagnostic capabilities may be limited to the transmission rate capacity of a vehicle data bus, such as a controller area network (CAN) data bus. Accordingly, engine control events that occur at higher rates than the transmission rate capacity of the vehicle data bus may be ignored in certain prior art diagnostic systems, which can lead to less accurate or more time-consuming diagnostic procedures.
Thus, there is a need to enhance the efficiency and performance of a method for performing remote diagnostics of a vehicle to address the above referenced problems.